I only had a chance to listen to a little so far. Bring it up in YT, though, and check out the comments. They are scary. Looks like Joe pulls in an audience of antisemitic misogynists. Is that typical or are the trolls looking for something to do?

Alas, the “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW) was filled with Alt Right since its inception. Bari Weiss’ piece already included them. The big names failed to disentangle themselves from them, or did it too little too late, despite many a warning.

Jerry ran many stories about the Women’s March organizers and their proximity to Farrakhan and anti-semitism. The IDW has a similar problem in another direction, which was unfortunately ignored. I know they aren’t an organization, but they still appear under a banner that questionable far righters also use to appear more moderate than they really are. I stress this isn’t the Woke Crying Nazi yet again.

You will find a link to the “sleek website” featuring Alex Jones, Vox Day, and Carl Benjamin. There’s also (or was) Stefan Molyneux, Mike Cernovich, Lauren Southern who are all Alt Right, or according to some nitpickers “Alt Lite” (because they aren’t as candid about their white supremacism as Richard Spencer).

Bari Weiss herself noted at the time:

“Go a click in one direction and the group is enhanced by intellectuals with tony affiliations like Steven Pinker at Harvard. But go a click in another and you’ll find alt-right figures like Stefan Molyneux and Milo Yiannopoulos and conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich (the #PizzaGate huckster) and Alex Jones (the Sandy Hook shooting denier).”

That’s why I thought this association was a bad idea at the time, and only looks worse as time went on. I understand guilty-by-association, and also know of “crying nazi” of the woke, who desensitised everybody. But none of this applies here, all things considered. The association is voluntary. It also works for them, as a kind of “audience-sharing”, “community building” mechanism, especially notable with Dave Rubin, who poached often alt right media personalities for his show.

Bari Weiss lists those names you say are excluded, and in my observation, they belong indeed into that cluster. I’m myself well-connected in that corner and I’ve seen myself how these people were suddenly relevant, abd what they say. Even Alex Jones was accepted in that strange metamodernist way. It’s simply a fact.

I don’t know why I always have to bring evidence, always meet denial, when there is absolutely nothing secret about it. All you need to do is check the website that is promoted as the IDW central register, or merely follow people in that cluster and see for yourself how the Alt Right, truther, Trump and conspiracy scene is right there, with the further far right barely a mouseclick away.

There’s a difference: the Women’s March organizers regularly praise and hang out with extremely prominent antisemites/homophobes/misogynists. Many in the “IDW” simply have normal people who happen to be alt-right following them. Those are two very, very different things, and I think you know that.

Carl Benjamin routinely produced content with the Far Right, including the most notable, like Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, or Steve Bannon. Not to mention countless more obscure Far Right characters. By Far Right, I mean functionally neo-fascists, ethno-nationalists, supremacists, etc. His apologists want you to know though that he was “debating” them, and “disagrees” with them on some fine print. It really is fine print, which is plain to everybody who actually know his content.

I don’t know where you got these names from. They are quite different from the ones I listed.

Here are a few examples of “egregious opinions”: Sandy Hook was a hoax. Different r/K selection strategies for different human “races”, insinuating some races are really like vermin, and also have a low IQ; white people are being replaced by a shadow elite (i.e. white genocide).

You say the same things in two different threads. Let me address this here:

Again, not I decide who belongs to the IDW. I cite Bari Weiss and the website, which is the “closest thing to a phone book for the I.D.W.” according to Weiss in the article that popularized the network. Nothing you linked to dispells that notion. Weinstein rather emphasises the alternative network character of the IDW, and I don’t care whatever Weinstein feels in his heart.

If they were just a bunch of individuals, there would be no network or coalition of sorts, or a tribe, and no name.

And indeed, that’s what you find: How did we get into a situation where Sam Harris defends Lauren Southern, who (at the time) already joined the “Identitarian Movement”
Her activities were of course documented by herself on video, and gathered media attention. Harris was prepared to introduce her as a “conservative” but said he didn’t actually know her work.

That’s pretty characteristic to this day. Where rubber meets the road, the IDW people never see anything. It’s totally blind on the right side. IDW also never heared or saw anything about Carl Benjamin. He appeared on Rubin Report warning about how white people are oppressed by elites who want to replace them with immigrants, i.e. white genocide. That’s somewhere on the 50min mark in one of the interviews. Just standard Dave Rubin Report. Of course, nobody never heard anything! Or the “Race and IQ” segment with Stefan Molyneux, a noted expert on population genetics. Why would this deserve airtime?

Another example. Nigel Farrage said on Tommy Robinson: “we did not want anybody in the [UKIP] party that had taints with organisations we deemed to be on the far right of British politics, […] It really upsets me to see the fact this debate is even taking place.”

Too right wing for Nigel Farrage! (for tactical reasons). Not so for the IDW people and their fans, who spread Robinson’s “Day For Freedom” event back then far and wide. The promo featured the british IDW network, who joined the UKIP recently (Benjamin, Meechan, PJ Watson) and their next neighbours on the far right side. Unsurprisingly. It also had on the promo material some key identitarian movement characters, next to Lauren Southern, there was Martin Sel*ner, austrian leader of the identitarians. The event was nicely promoted also in atheist IDW circles, e.g. Stephen Knight, GSpellchecker, who mocked media and people who pointed out the obvious far right flavour of the rally. See nothing, hear nothing. It’s not there. Nothing to see. What are you talking about?

I see your point:
The “Evil Juice” are so powerful & evil that they even control the alt-right!

“If they were just a bunch of individuals, there would be no network or coalition of sorts, or a tribe, and no name.”
You obviously did not listen to the video Eric posted on the subject.
There is no tribe, no official list, no website, just an ironic cheeky concept to get people engaged in real intellectual dialog.

From your tone you seem to HATE people on the right like Benjamin, Molyneux and Southern.
Would you in principle be prepared to debate them, let them see issues from your perspective?

I did watch it, and I know the corner very well. It’s of course implausible to pretend there was no common cause of sorts, with a shared audience (fostered by joint apparences). It’s also irrelevant, since I cite Bari Weiss. The NYT matters more on what groups are recognized, than what I personally feel about the matter. I find her list adequate.

I also don’t hate anyone, which would be goal post moving anyway, but I’m happy that you recognize Benjamin, Molyneux and Southern as part of the IDW group. I think Benjamin is maybe redeemable. His politics are all over the place, and I was an early subscriber (unsubbed long ago, but YT spills occadional videos into my feed). However he’s presently far right, but at least has the illusion he is a liberal. Nobody but himself believes it, maybe he himself doesn’t, but his marriage with the Alt Reich failed and his divorce might propell him back to saner grounds. I don‘t know that much about Molyneux and how deep his racial views go, he’s more of a loon. But Southern campaigns for, and hangs out with the identitarian movement, who are part of the European neo nazi scene, she’s a Reichsfräulein.

I would debate them, because I’m a nobody. If I had a name and a platform, I wouldn’t. I am in favour of free speech, however against platforming such characters.

She makes many great points here, but one really stood out to me, regarding the difference between antisemitism and other types of bigotry: “racists perceive themselves as punching down against a group that’s lesser. Antisemites perceive themselves as punching up against this secret cabal of wily operators who secretly control the levers of power.”

I never thought about that. It goes a great way toward explaining why antisemitism is considered so much more acceptable than bigotry against other groups, and also why Jews get no sympathy from the intersectional/social justice crowd.

2 Things. I would expect that clandestine backroom discussions about pulling levers probably do feature a disproportionate number of jews, which of course is no excuse for baking the local bagel baker who has probably never seen a lever.Secondly, racists come in all flavours. There are those who don’t really care about who is racially “superior” but find an influx of clashing cultures disturbing and take the utilitarian view of race as a proxy for culture. There is your standard Nazi who thinks of the untermensch as vermin dirtying the gene pool. Weiss’s view strikes me as very white racist centric. There are probably as many factions of self-identified fighting the cabal racists as there are countries World countries. Ask the the Malays what they think of the Chinese.

From where do you get your assumption that Jews are plotting in backrooms to sway elections? If you have no data, then that’s pure antisemitism. And did you hear Weiss celebrate the diversity of New York? If you can’t justify your first sentence, then just go away.

::Rolls eyes:: I won’t bother asking for proof or anything. Even our esteemed host can’t get you to provide evidence of your claims, nor make you own up to intentionally discounting Weiss’ celebration of diversity, so there’s certainly nothing I can do.

Its a great point. Any account of “intersectionality” that excludes the Jews is immediatley suspect, to my mind. If any groups counts as genuinely oppressed–they do. If you think otherwise then your moral compass needs a shake

Jews. They count as genuinely oppressed. For as long as we have had records (6K years), the worst kinds of oppression imaginable (e.g. the holocaust) and every type of victimization on offer (from genocide to victim-blaming). Is this news to anyone?